SedanChair posted:

This nation is actually a paradise where every citizen, and many noncitizens, are absolutely free to express themselves, to love, to move across borders, to engage in trade, to make fortunes, to criticize the government, to praise God or deplore him, and to traverse its broad highways and take in its scenic parks. That which has never been achieved in all history, has been achieved in America. It's easy to criticize the prosperous, egalitarian and bureaucratically sound model which we have wrested from the founders' original intentions but this is it. The stable and effective governance of 300 million. It is astonishing.

Nobody, not the greatest politicians, not the greatest social scientists, and certainly not the activists, can think of even a single reform that could be implemented and cause measurable change. That's not gridlock, and it's not corruption ; it's the closest thing to perfection that does not proceed directly from the hand of God.